Our 2018 1040 line 10 shows a taxable income of ~$550K. Thanks in part to getting rid of the Pease and PEP phaseouts, our taxes were ~$25K lower than what they would have been under the previous tax code.
We live in a low tax state (NV) so we weren't hurt by SALT limitations.

For anyone thinking we aren't paying our 'fair share' of income taxes, our federal taxes paid for 2018 was $145,000.

My taxes went up about $300 when taking new standard deduction, but state taxes jumped a few grand. If you take the Federal standard deduction, you can't itemize your Maryland state return. I ran my taxes both ways and I can either itemize and send a few extra grand to the Feds (SALT limits make itemizing a poor choice in my case) or take the standard deduction and send a similar additional sum to the State (small standard deduction makes that a poor choice), so I chose to "buy local".

I just ran my 2018 numbers through TurboTax 2017 to see the difference. When I did this for a relative, retired, only dividends, interest and capital gains, it showed that they didn't get a benefit, had a small increase.

When I put my numbers in, I was very surprised to see that my total tax was 8.5% less than under TurboTax 2018. Deductions came up 3,2% less, which I attribute to the QBI being larger than in 2018 than the missed SALT deductions, so my income came up higher, and I owed more tax. A pleasant surprise, because I was very skeptical that I'd see one dime more. But I did.

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A little hard to precisely parse out the effect of tax law changes, as we had a bump in income due to (temporary) two earners, but overall this feels bad:

AGI increased 45% from 2017 to 2018 (from just barely into the 25% bracket, to just barely into the new 24% bracket)
Taxable income increased 102%
Total tax paid increased 134%
Effective rate (is based on AGI, right?) went from 7.4% to 12.0%

Used to itemize deductions (California mortgage interest & income tax, charitable) plus exemptions for family of four. Now I get $24,000 standard deduction. Big drop in deductions.

I live in a high SALT state, so loss of these deductions was not favorable to us. We ended up taking the standard deduction. What we didn't realize until we met with our accountant was that we were also losing personal exemptions to the tune of an additional $8100 in deductions. Bottom line, we paid about $1500 more in Federal tax than we did last year on virtually the same income.

I live in a high SALT state, so loss of these deductions was not favorable to us. We ended up taking the standard deduction. What we didn't realize until we met with our accountant was that we were also losing personal exemptions to the tune of an additional $8100 in deductions. Bottom line, we paid about $1500 more in Federal tax than we did last year on virtually the same income.

Yeah, this killed us (in CA). Went from $67,000 of deductions in 2017 to $25,000 in 2018.

Last year - due to condo sale - I made 3 quarterly tax payments of about 1200. I also did state donation of 400 and 800. My net taxes due (Fed & State) just a hair over 10K. My total income was 350K.

This year - no tax payments and not very charitable - no donations - (due to wife not working and trying to maintain extreme saving and investing rate) - so this year only tax withheld was that from my paychecks.
Income was down this year to 250K.

We owe 5K total for fed and state. Huge improvement.

First year we haven't had a big tax bill of 10K - last 3 have been at least 10K - brutal!

I figured going into the process that I'd be screwed on underpayment given the 10k cap on SLT on schedule A. Historically we have owed about $10k extra every year when filing - MFJ with two incomes always skews our withholding.

Just filed yesterday and some of the highlights:
-Total taxes owed decreased by $12k
-Effective rate decreased from 22% to 18%
-No AMT this year

It turned out to be true that the 10k cap on SLT put me into the standard deduction camp this year and personal exemptions were also removed. However that $4k in child tax credits (2 kids) is huge, plus the tax table shifted things.

AGI up 23.6% from 2017, effective tax rate down 3.2% to 24.1% in 2018 from 27.3% in 2017. QBID helped a bit.

There must be a real sweet spot here somewhere -- where the SALT limitation doesn't take a bite and where the QBID is not phased out at all. I would think that lucky soul would be saving 5%+ on effective tax rate.

Finally finished ours. Higher income because I started working again in May and therefore higher effective tax rate, despite our marginal rate dropping from 15% to 12%. 3 big surprises:

1) Some of our taxable Fidelity index funds (small cap index - FSSNX and extended market index - FSMAX) spun off some hefty capital gains in December. Um, Fidelity... don't do this again or Vanguard is going to get my taxable money.
2) Some of our K-1 income qualified for QBI. That was a pleasant surprise
3) Even with higher income, I qualified for an ACA premium credit for the 4 months that I wasn't working.

My effective federal tax rate has increased by 70%. I did an apples to apples comparison between 2017 and 2018 (where I plugged in my 2017 numbers in a 2018 return). In my case the increase was entirely because of the SALT deduction cap of $10,000. I'm in CA and my property tax alone exceeds the cap. My effective rate in 2017 was 5.6% and running the same numbers in 2018 resulted in a 9.5% effective tax rate.

My actual effective rate this year is even higher, 11.6%, but I'll have to run those numbers in a 2017 return to see if it's also 70% higher than it would have been. In any case, it's the biggest year over year effective tax rate increase I've ever experienced.

When I did this for a relative, retired, only dividends, interest and capital gains, it showed that they didn't get a benefit, had a small increase.

Retired, Social Security, interest, and IRA RMD, I got clobbered primarily by the SALT change and wound up paying several thousand dollars more. When I was in the post office mailing my return, there were about 8 people there and everyone was talking about how their taxes had gone up considerably.

Hello, I am new here, just lurking and learning. Semi-retired last year, fully next. MFJ. Our taxes have always fairly complex due to an assortment of reasons — no W-2 income, various family farming interests, rental income, his professional LLC and my professional partnership interest, and two states involved, so we don’t do our own taxes and just got them from CPA yesterday - all 244 pages ( including cover sheets and fed plus two states)! As expected with farming income off a bit and moving towards semi retirement so gross taxable income down about 101k and AGI was down almost 93k, or down little less than 25% from 2017, but Fed. taxes down from 110k to 65k (50%!). Nice not to be writing a check on tax day! Effective tax rate 2017 - 28.1; effective tax rate 2018 - 21.7. Observations looking at two year comparison — hit hard by SALT limit to the tune of approx. 43k but QBI deductions of 55k more than made up for difference and we had mortgage interest deduction for the first time in years (new build retirement house in HCOLA, coming from LCOLA but will probably will pay mortgage off sometime this year so that deduction will go away for 2020.)

Who knows what next year will bring — inherited additional smaller % farming interests (but will qualify for qbi) and a 1m taxable account, but less income from our profession as we slide more semi retired.

2017 - received $3300 refund from the feds
2018 - I own $2200 to the fed

I also have to now pay the fed $1400 each quarter for future 2019 taxes. I live in Cali and not feeling good at the moment. I think the middle class in Cali got screwed.

D

If you used TurboTax, the per quarter amount they come up with is for your total witholdings above and beyond the standard deductions. You don’t actually have to send the IRS that money. If you did, you would end up sending them 5600 extra and then be back to a 3300 return. What you should do is either adjust your w4 allowances or divide 2200/12 = 183.33 and withhold that extra amount. You will be at net even if your income and tax situation changes.

As long you’re above the 90% penalty threshold for under withholding, you won’t need to pay it even if you owe more than 1k.

For us, the SALT screwed us even though we live in LCOL. Gross went up 30%, federal tax went down 1k total but instead of deducting nearly 20k, we were stuck with 10k. Ended up owing an extra ~$1500.

The people that got hit were medium income earners (who didn't benefit much if at all from the loosened AMT) from high tax states with high property taxes. Under previous rules their itemized deductions far exceeded the old standard deduction plus they got a personal exemption. Now their remaining deductions might barely top the standard deduction and the exemption disappeared.

My brother is a case in point. His total tax bill (not just what he owed) went up by close to $2K for almost the same AGI. Between the loss of $$ itemized deductions + personal exemption AND the way they tweaked the breakpoints of the marginal tax brackets, the difference in his effective tax rate was not enough to make up for his higher taxable income because of the SALT limitation and loss of personal exemption.

I think it got lost in the hype, but singles at the upper end of the former 25% marginal tax bracket ended up in the 24% bracket (instead of 22%) since they lowered the top of the bracket by almost $10K. The top $30+ K of the 28% marginal bracket was pushed to a higher marginal rate of 32%, although I expect many of those taxpayers benefited from the loosening of the AMT rules.

Here are some quotes/ statistics from a new CNN article on the new tax law:

The vast majority of American tax filers -- more than 65% -- will see their overall tax burden decrease by at least $100, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

Slightly less than 30% of filers will see very little change in their tax liability and a small percentage, about 6%, will see an increase.

But while most Americans got a tax cut, most people don't seem to understand they got one. According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll out this week, only 17% of Americans think they're getting a tax cut while 28% said they will pay more.

According to preliminary 2018 tax filing season data from H&R Block, one of the nation's largest tax preparers, the average tax filing they've processed so far shows a 24.9% drop in tax liability. But because of the way the IRS changed its paycheck withholding, that cut was spread over the course of the year and refunds, on average, have barely moved.
The government paid $6 billion less in refunds through March 29, according to the IRS, although the average refund, according to its data, is $2,873 and has shrunk less than 1% compared with last year.

the cap in deductions will likely hit people in the top 1% of wage earners in those (blue) states the hardest, although there will be people affected across the income spectrum.

I’m here to report, I paid more tax in 2018 and I like it, I finally live the Warren Buffet’s dream . I did a big Roth conversion and my daughter is not on my tax return anymore. Yeah, the SALT tax got a bit salty.

Looks like our effective Income tax rate went down quite a bit compared to 2017.

2017 effective rate: 19.0%
2018 effective rate: 9.7%

Half of the reduction is related to the tax changes (about equal benefit from lower tax bracket rates and child tax credit for 2 children; minimal benefit from deduction/exemption changes and the new qualified business deduction). The other half of reduction is from one-off situations (e.g., QTP distribution last year and EV credit this year).

Good old Maryland taking advantage of the tax law changes to boost income tax revenues without even having to lift a legislative finger. I'd like to see the state give residents the option to itemize their state returns even if their federal returns claim the standard deduction or at least significantly boost the maximum state standard deduction as I lost over $9k in deductions compared to 2017 due to this.